One Man's Trash is Another Man's Brother
by Skysalla
Summary: Sam's date goes unexpectedly sour and he finds himself stuck.


This was written for Jenn who requested Stuck!Sam with whump and angst.

You're the greatest big brother ever dude!

I own nothing.

-`-`-`-`

His phone was ringing again.

He really, _really_ hated when his phone rang at three o'clock in the freaking morning.

Especially when he'd just barely fallen asleep and said phone was on the table on the other side of his now frigid motel room.

"This had better be good."

Dean threw the covers off and stumbled as quickly as he could across the room, his toes recoiling in terror with each contact of the frozen tundra of a floor. His hand clasped the small device and he stumbled back to bed, throwing himself beneath the covers before lifting the phone to his ear.

"What?!" He barked, hissing as the cold screen attacked his ear. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"D-Dean."

He was suddenly sitting bolt upright, cold air be damned, as his brain instantly recalled where Sam had said he was going. His brother's voice was small, reminiscent of the tearful child Dean used to buy ice cream for to make feel better.

"Sammy."

"Dean…." Sam coughed, his statement lost.

"Sammy, I thought you were staying the night with that girl…Charlotte, or Cherry or something."

"Chanel."

"And?" Dean grabbed the dirty socks he'd thrown at the foot of the bed, trying to figure out why he ever believed it had been a good idea to take them off.

"Dean…" His voice was curt and Dean smirked, apparently it was bad if Sam didn't want to talk about it. He remained quiet though as he continued throwing on layer after layer, silently cursing the heater for being defective.

Sam sniffled on the other end of the line and Dean broke the silence. "What's the problem, Sam?"

"I'm…stuck."

Dean faltered. "What do you mean….stuck?"

He could hear Sam's exasperated sigh loudly in his ear. "Stuck, Dean. Not capable of movement, to become lodged in a single location and unable to free oneself."

"Thank you Websters. I mean _where_ are you stuck and what kind of stuck." And Sam said _he_ was the smart ass.

Sam's voice seemed to be getting impossibly smaller. "Could…could you just come get me?"

"Tell me where you are, dumbass." Dean dug through a pile of laundry for the keys to the car, knowing they were in his pocket when he'd gotten back.

"I'm…down near the police station."

Dean's hand froze as he came in contact with the cold metal of the car keys. "Near, or in?"

"Near. The apartment building behind it." He let out a sigh, getting Sam out of jail would have been a hell of a lot trickier.

"Sammy, you sly dog. She leave you cuffed to the bed?"

"Dean." Sam's voice hitched up to irritated.

"A chair?" Dean snagged one of Sam's jackets, figuring his brother could use the extra warmth. "Man, you better not be naked when I get there. I've seen enough of your business changing diapers to scar me for a lifetime."

He slipped out into the freezing winter night and blinked through the light snowfall that was gently dusting the top of his car. "You know, I'm disappointed, I thought you knew how to pick a lock. I mean, after all the pract-"

"Dean." His brother's pained tone brought him quickly out of his lecture as he dropped into the Impala. "I can't feel my legs."

-`-`-`-`-`

Dean was pretty sure he broke sound-speed records getting over to Sam. Which, given the proximity of his brother to the police station, was probably a bad idea.

He stopped the car as soon as he saw the apartment building, not caring if he double parked it in front of some yuppies' precious BMW, and was running to the building as fast as he could go.

The gated apartment complex was clearly designed to keep juvenile delinquents from stealing espresso machines, or whatever 'high class' people kept in their houses. But the amateur security was no match for an older brother on a rescue mission; particularly when that older brother was Dean Winchester.

Dean made quick work scaling the fence before jogging around the back of the building. Sam had been very non descript as to where he was on the phone, and before Dean had been able to demand a description his phone had given out.

"Sammy!" He jumped to the side as a stray cat darted across his path, the animal dislodging a precariously perched piece of trash in the recycling. "Sammy, where are you?"

"Dean." His head snapped in the direction of his Sam's weak voice. At least, in the direction he thought he'd heard his brother's voice.

"Sam?" He started towards the dumpster, not sure if he believed his ears on this one.

"I'm in here." He climbed on top of an old entertainment unit that was laying on it's side next to the dumpster. There, half buried in garbage, was his younger brother.

Sam's lower lip stuck out in a pout at him. "You hung up on me."

"I did not." Dean nearly gagged on the smell of mixed rotting foods, used diapers and every other reeking object a person could possibly think to throw away. "My phone died."

Aside from the bump on his brother's head Sam appeared to be perfectly fine. If you could call being nestled in the world's most putrid garbage 'perfectly fine.'

"How long you been laying here?"

"Dunno. I woke up when someone threw their trash on me." Dean looked down to where Sam indicated. His lower half was covered by a couple of bags of trash, one of which appeared to be the diaper culprit.

"And you didn't think to yell at them to get you out?" Dean said, reaching over to shift the bags from Sam's legs.

"They threw em from up there." Sam pointed to the fire escape above them. "I don't think they could hear me."

Dean had to stretch to get the diaper bag, the extended angle awkward to shift the unusually heavy trash. The unit beneath him creaked, and before he had a chance to get a proper grip on the edge of the dumpster, the furniture collapsed.

"Dean!"

The only thing Dean was aware of during the disorienting fall was the sound of his brother's panicked voice and the smell of week old baby poop.

There was a small crack as he landed awkwardly on his left wrist, and Dean lay on the ground for a minute to compose himself. Sam's voice kept repeating his name over and over again above him, and Dean was pretty sure Sam was about to drown in concern.

"I'm okay." He shifted to get up, and grunted in pain when he put weight on his wrist.

"You don't sound okay."

"I'm fine." He rolled on to his side and inspected his wrist in the dim light. It was quickly starting to swell and Dean wasn't sure how much longer he would have mobility in it.

He circled the dumpster, finding the metal rungs that passed for a ladder on the side. Climbing one handed was trickier than he had anticipated. "What happened?"

Dean swung his leg up so he was sitting on the edge of the dumpster. "Piece of crap furniture fell apart on me."

"Told you to lay off the pie."

"You want me to leave you here? This place stinks and you're making me willingly climb in to goodness knows what." He narrowed his eyes, but they both knew it was an empty threat.

Dean looked at the pile below him, and decided that besides the smell that was never going to come off him or his clothes, there wouldn't be any damage to his jumping in.

He had a pretty good notion of how far out into the trash his brother's legs extended, but he was careful with his footing as he made his way closer to Sam. He squatted next to Sam and began again to shift the garbage trapping his brother in the foul smelling dumpster.

He had expected to discover Sam's intestines spilled out when he moved the last of the garbage, maybe a solidifying bucket of cement or a sprung bear trap that was keeping the younger hunter from being able to move. But when he finally managed to clear the trash off his brother's body, there was nothing out of the ordinary to see.

"You called me to climb in a dumpster and move that stuff off you?"

"Dean, I tried. I can't move my legs." Sam's voice was hinting on panicked again and Dean rested a hand reassuringly on his knee.

"It's okay. We'll figure this out." He gently patted Sam's kneecap, noting it felt fine as he quickly moved his one good hand over the other bones. "I'm gonna see if anything is broken."

Sam did nothing but nod as Dean did the check up. "Do you feel anything?"

"No."

Dean started to do another check, probing with more force in case he missed something subtle. Even though he knew nothing subtle would cause immobility in the legs.

"Deaaan." Sam's voice whined, and for a minute Dean thought maybe he'd found the source of the pain. "I'm thirsty."

"Oh shit."

Over the years, Dean had acquired a skill that he was not particularly proud or fond of. With the many injuries he and his family had been through, Dean found he could easily tell when any single one of them was entering a state of shock as a result of blood loss.

Dean and their Dad always cursed like a sailor and felt dizzy when it happened. But Sam usually got whiney and thirsty, right before he vomited.

Dean lurched towards Sam's head, barely shoving his brother onto his side in time for the puking to start. Sam cried out in pain, but whether it was from the movement or the vomiting, Dean couldn't be sure.

He patiently held Sam's head as the heaves racked his brother's body. Only when he was finished did Dean slowly ease him back onto his back.

"Sammy, where are you bleeding?"

"I'm not bleeding, you are." Sam scrunched up his face and stared at Dean's forehead. "Right there."

Dean ran a hand across his forehead, his fingers dragging through a sticky substance he knew instantly to be blood. "I think I hit my head when I fell. But you little brother, you're going into shock."

"Nuh uh." Sam shook his head, the movement temporarily making Sam appear nauseous again.

"Yeah, Sam. You are." There was no visible blood pooling beneath or around Sam's body, which meant only one thing to Dean. Internal bleeding.

"Sam, Sammy, look at me." He waited till he had Sam's unfocused eyes on his. "…How'd you get in here?"

"I dunno." Dean grabbed the jacket he'd left draped over the edge of the dumpster and covered Sam's arms.

"Tell me what you do know. You went home with that girl, Chastity-"

"Chanel." Sam corrected, his face contorted as if he was holding back another bout of nausea.

"Okay, so you and Chanel came here for a little alone time and?"

"We went on the roof." Sam groaned and held his head. "There was someone else, I think it was her sister?"

"Dude, you got taken out by a girl?"

"She hit me with a bat!"

Dean looked up to the roof, five stories. "And you fell." He didn't need to ask, it was the only logical assumption. The mere prospect of someone hitting his baby brother off the roof of a building and leaving him made Dean's blood boil. "They didn't even come to check on you?"

"I think they thought I died."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't. Otherwise I'd have some real living people to hunt down and klll." Not that he wouldn't be doing that anyways after Sam was taken care of. "Let's sit you up."

He grabbed his brother's left forearm with his right, being careful not to show Sam the lovely swelling that had plumbed his left wrist up to the size of a prize wining watermelon.

He pulled Sam upright, but the cry of pain from Sam caused Dean to instantly drop him back into the trash. He didn't bother asking where the pain was, instead he instantly started checking Sam over for the hidden injury.

What he found, was the most extensive bruising he had ever seen. The colors were spreading up Sam's side and stomach from under his jeans in an intricate design that would have looked cool on anyone else. He gently pressed down on Sam's hip, feeling not only the swelling, but the awkward movement of bone.

Sam practically whimpered from the pressure before promptly passing out. Dean removed his hand and checked his brother's pupils, unable to tell in the dim light what the probability of a concussion was.

"Damn it Sammy." Dean hated being out of control of a situation. But with enough internal bleeding to send his brother into shock, he didn't have much of a choice.

He dug out Sam's phone and quickly called for an ambulance.

-`-`-`-`

There had been no avoiding the cast now adorning Dean's wrist. No way in hell was he leaving the hospital when he didn't even know Sam's condition and it was near impossible to hide an injured limb that was nearly ripping the seams of his jacket when every other person he met was a medical professional.

They'd nearly had to restrain him in order to get him to sit still long enough for the cast. Since then his constant pacing was making the nurses uneasy and he'd overheard more than one of them discussing sedatives.

He practically jumped on the male nurse who came out from behind the closed doors. After about three dozen times doing this, the man was expecting it and expertly sidestepped before Dean could stop him.

"Ellen Grey?"

Dean sulked back to the side of the door, nearly crushing a stray child's toy on his way. He slumped against the wall and awkwardly folded his arms across his chest as he watched the nurse take yet another person that was not him back to see yet another patient that was not Sam.

He was working up some sort of FBI nonsense cover story when the male nurse came back out and looked straight at him. The guy knew who Dean was there for, had avoided his gaze every other time he had come out to get someone.

"Sam –"

"I'm his brother, cut the crap. Let's go." The man pushed the door open and Dean stormed into the hallway that had been eluding him for the past six hours. "Where is he?"

"If you'll just step this way Mr. Hughes." Dean narrowed his eyes at the man and contemplated how much it would hurt his arm to beat the man's face with his cast.

He stepped into the room the guy indicated, expecting to see an irritated little brother pouting into a cup of Jell-o. Instead, he found himself in an office, Sam nowhere to be found.

"I'm not sure I understand. Where's Sam." He glared at the man behind the desk, ignoring the blatant indication that he should take a seat.

"We brought you in here Mr. Hughes to apprise you of your brother's condition." The man pulled a file towards him and flicked through it. He was annoyingly careful to block the contents from Dean's view.

"You said Sam fell from the roof of the apartment building?"

Dean prevented himself from punching the guy in the face and snatching the file from his hands. "That's what he told me yes."

"A height of five stories?"

"I didn't use a measuring tape but that's what it looked like." His eyes flicked down to the nameplate on the edge of the desk, Dr. Raltz was quickly making his way up Dean's personal hit list. "You wanna tell me what's going on with Sam?"

"Your brother was very lucky. A fall like that could have killed him."

Dean practically growled at the doctor. "What _did_ it do to him?"

"Sam sustained a serious fracture to his pelvis. This injury resulted in extensive internal bleeding, several of his organs were severely damaged and we're monitoring them for failure."

Dean backed into the chair, refusing to sink down into it with the news. "He said he couldn't feel his legs."

"The break pinched the nerves in his spine, cutting off any ability to move or feel them." The doctor flipped the file shut and looked up at Dean, seemingly surprised that the hunter was still on his feet. "We brought you in here to prepare you for the sight of your brother. We had to put him in skeletal traction in order to realign the bones and alleviate the pain."

"Skeletal what?"

"Traction. It's an elaborate system of pulleys and weights that hold the patient immobile and help the bones to heal. Skeletal traction requires pins be inserted into the body to more directly aid the healing process."

This time Dean did sit down. "How long is the healing process?"

The doctor stood and circled the desk. "We have to leave him in traction, few weeks to a month or two."

"So no leaving AMA?"

"Not if he ever wants to walk again." The doctor seemed to be trying to look through him. "You planning on busting him out for some reason?"

"No, it's just…Sammy doesn't really like hospitals." He lied.

"Well your brother doesn't have much of an option in the matter. We need to keep him still if he has any hope of healing."

-`-`-`-`

Sam looked miserable.

Not the kind of miserable that Dean had seen many times in his life, Sam looked ten times more miserable than Dean had ever seen him before.

He was wrapped around his middle, a series of ropes pulling at the slings suspending his lower half in the air.

Sam's arm was slung over his face, obscuring his eyes from view, but Dean knew he was awake.

Dean could see the metal pins sticking into Sam's skin, they were thicker than he expected. Sam was going to be here a while.

"So the Doctor tells me like 60% of the guys who break their pelvis become impotent." He crossed the room, pushing past the nurse on his way to Sam's side.

The nurse clearing Sam's dishes from the room coughed. "I believe the statistic is actually less than 20%"

Dean frowned at her quickly retreating back. "Right, I must have heard wrong." He glanced back at Sam's face and although short lived, the joke had been totally worth it.

Dean slid a chair up to the head of Sam's bed and kicked his feet up next to Sam's face. "Hope you're not one of those statistics Sam. Haven't got anyone else to supply me with a little nephew or niece to pass the Impala to. Cause goodness knows you aren't getting her."

"Get your own kid." Sam grumbled, returning his arm to drape over his face.

"Naw. But don't worry, you're too much of a girl anyways." He nudged Sam's arm with his shoe.

"Go away." Sam mumbled from beneath his sleeve.

Dean contemplated jumping up and leaving, letting Sam have his emo moment in private. But he knew Sam really didn't want him to leave, so he stayed firmly in place. "No can do little bro." He grinned. "You're stuck with me."


End file.
